Human Molecular Genetics Advance Access originally published online on April 9, 2009
Human Molecular Genetics 2009 18(13):2518-2522; doi:10.1093/hmg/ddp177
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Identification of AF4/FMR2 family, member 3 (AFF3) as a novel rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility locus and confirmation of two further pan-autoimmune susceptibility genes




1 arc-Epidemiology Unit, Stopford Building, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK 2 School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Sheffield University, Sheffield S10 2JF, UK 3 Section of Musculoskeletal Disease, Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK 4 Clinical and Academic Rheumatology, Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Denmark Hill SE5 9RS, London, UK 5 Musculoskeletal and Genetics Section, Division of Applied Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, UK, 6 Botnar Research Centre, Institute of Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LD, UK
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +44 1612755037; Fax: +44 1612755043; Email: anne.barton{at}manchester.ac.uk
Received February 9, 2009; Accepted April 6, 2009
The concept of susceptibility genes common to different autoimmune diseases is now firmly established with previous studies demonstrating overlap of loci conferring susceptibility to type 1 diabetes (T1D) with both Coeliac disease and multiple sclerosis. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an archetypal autoimmune disease and we, therefore, targeted putative T1D susceptibility loci for genotyping in UK RA cases and unrelated controls. A novel RA susceptibility locus at AFF3 was identified with convincing evidence for association in a combined sample cohort of 6819 RA cases and 12 650 controls [OR 1.12 95% confidence intervals (CI) 1.07–1.17, P = 2.8 x 10–7]. Association of two previously described loci (CTLA-4 and 4q27) with RA was also replicated (OR 0.87, 95% CI 0.82–0.94, P = 1.1 x 10–4 and OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.79–0.94, P = 5.4 x 10–4, respectively). These findings take the number of established RA susceptibility loci to 13, only one of which has not been associated with other autoimmune diseases.
These two authors contributed equally to the work.
Supplementary note online.